"Billingsgate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hot, frowsy, greasy air of the coffee house. Customers were clamouring to be served and there was no Hannah to wait upon them. Mrs. Fenton, her eyes flashing fire, was bustling up and down between the rows of boxes and denouncing the truant waitress in vigorous Billingsgate. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... have cost his parents a good sum. Where would you find any but an accomplished classical scholar to compare the books of the present (or indeed any other) writer to "sardonic divings after the pearl of truth, whose lustre is eclipsed in the display of the diseased oyster;" mere Billingsgate doesn't turn out oysters like these; they are of the Lucrine lake:—this satirist has pickled his rods in Latin brine. Fancy, not merely a diver, but a sardonic diver: and the expression of his confounded ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... keep it full of vigor until the end. She knew, therefore, that the last sitting before the Easter recess had been a storm of words sharp as sword-thrusts—it was before the days of the language of Billingsgate and the behavior of roughs. There were quite a number of gentlemen still in the House of Commons, who ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... qualify him for his position as judge. A man may be cunning, and so is a fox. He may have the qualities which enable him to browbeat a witness, and so has a bully. He may have great volubility, and so has a Billingsgate fishwife. He may even have considerable legal acumen, and yet be narrow and coarse. A man to be a judge, as you just remarked, should be of a broad, judicial mind, able to look at a case in all its bearings, to sift evidence, balance probabilities, and, being above prejudice and every outward ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... tongue can one body forth his indignation or express a tithe of his contempt—he gropes in vain for invectives that bear upon their sulphurous wings an adumbration of his anger. One must sometimes stand speechless before a subject, else burn his lips with blasphemy or befoul them with billingsgate. Two months ago my attention was called to a precious pair of attorneys at San Antonio, Texas, who seem to have not only touched the profoundest depths of subter-brutish degradation, but to have wallowed there like swine in an open sewer, proud of their own dishonor, infatuated with their ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... such a course advisable. He walked to and fro in his room, and cogitated as few people beside Theodore Racksole could cogitate. At 6 a.m. he took a stroll round the business part of his premises, and watched the supplies come in from Covent Garden, from Smithfield, from Billingsgate, and from other strange places. He found the proceedings of the kitchen department quite interesting, and made mental notes of things that he would have altered, of men whose wages he would increase and men ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... inlaid for the eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged, deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of a great building,—say Fishmongers' Hall,—where everybody commercially connected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with a wisdom of the market;—might not the art have been greater, worthier, and kinder in ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... According to a Billingsgate fish merchant kippers are daily increasing in price. It is, of course, too much to hope that they will ever become so dear as to prohibit their use among comedians on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... criticism than would now be tolerated. All the world permitted and expected strong partisanship, bitter personality, and downright abuse. They would have called our more sober reticence by the name of feebleness: their truculence we stigmatize as slander and Billingsgate. Wilson was an extremist in everything; yet he strained but a point or two beyond his fellows. When the tide of party began gradually to subside, he fell with it. Mrs. Gordon has given a very correct picture of the state ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and the altar by lies—who being (by common consent) the finest, the most humane and accomplished writer of his age, associated himself with and encouraged the lowest panders of a venal press; deluging, nauseating the public mind with the offal and garbage of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar slang; shewing no remorse, no relenting or compassion towards the victims of this nefarious and organized system of party-proscription, carried on under the mask of literary criticism and fair discussion, insulting the misfortunes of some, and trampling ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Thus sea fish, oysters etc. were formerly much cheaper during the summer than during the winter, at Ostend and Scheveningen, because during winter they could be sent to a distance. At Billingsgate market, in the mackerel season, fish cost per hundred 48 to 50 shillings at 5 o'clock in the morning, 36 shillings at 10 o'clock, and 24 shillings in the afternoon. (H. Schulze, Nat-OEkonomische ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... where I went; for I felt not the ground I stepped on, and the farther I was out of danger, the faster I went, till, tired and out of breath, I was forced to sit down on a little bench at a door, and then I began to recover, and found I was got into Thames Street, near Billingsgate. I rested me a little and went on; my blood was all in a fire; my heart beat as if I was in a sudden fright. In short, I was under such a surprise that I still knew not wither I was going, or what ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... adding supernumerary syllables when they talk of break-fastes, and toastesses, and running their heads against the postasses to avoid the wild beastesses. These female orators, brought up at the bar of Billingsgate, have a peculiar way of expressing themselves, which, however indelicate it may seem to more civilized ears, is exactly conformable to the way of ancient oratory. The difference between ancient and modern oratory consists in saying something or nothing to the purpose. Some ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... most full intent, A true choice spirit, we admit; With wits a fool, with fools a wit: Hear him but talk, and you would swear Obscenity herself was there, And that Profaneness had made choice, By way of trump, to use his voice; That, in all mean and low things great, He had been bred at Billingsgate; 390 And that, ascending to the earth Before the season of his birth, Blasphemy, making way and room, Had mark'd him in his mother's womb. Too honest (for the worst of men In forms are honest, now and then) ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Numa, or Sabor, or Sheeta, or any other beast of the jungle been seeking to destroy him, the ape-man would have danced about hurling missiles and invectives at his assailant. He would have insulted and taunted them, reviling in the jungle Billingsgate he knew so well; but now he sat silent out of Tantor's reach and upon his handsome face was an expression of deep sorrow and pity, for of all the jungle folk Tarzan loved Tantor the best. Could he have slain him he would not have thought of doing so. His one idea was ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... metaphor of the houses: I am coming back to it. The good societies say, 'I tell you to do this because I am Cambridge.' The bad ones say, 'I tell you to do that because I am the great world, not because I am 'Peckham,' or 'Billingsgate,' or 'Park Lane,' but 'because I am the great world.' They lie. And fools like you listen to them, and believe that they are a thing which does not exist and never has existed, and confuse 'great,' which has no meaning ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... Fox prevailed on the Duke to go over to the court. With her coarse intemperate humour, she said, "that was the Fox that had stolen her goose." Repeated injuries at last drove the Duke to go to law with her. Fearing that even no lawyer would come up to the Billingsgate with which she was animated herself, she appeared in the court of justice, and with some wit and infinite abuse, treated the laughing public with the spectacle of a woman who had held the reigns of empire, metamorphosed into ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... sum—all but the very last fragment of his fortune—in the service of Goneril. A desperate quarrel instantly takes place between the two fine ladies over this last scrap of their father's property. They are fast degenerating into Parisian Billingsgate, when Goriot succeeds in obtaining silence and proposes to strip himself of his last penny. Even the sisters hesitate at such an impiety, and Rastignac enters with some apology for listening, and hands over to the countess a certain ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... 'tis by every sort And sex adored, from Billingsgate to court. But ask a dame 'how oysters sell?' if nice, She begs a pinch before she sets a price. Go thence to 'Change, inquire the price of Stocks; Before they ope their lips they open first the box. Next pay a visit to the Temple, where The lawyers live, who gold to Heaven prefer; You'll ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... militant he will find society. He instituted libel suits against the most prominent editors in the country, among them Horace Greeley and Thurlow Weed. And what is more to the point,—he won his cases. But this did not make him any more popular with the press. When we remember that Billingsgate was an important part of the literary equipment of the critic of Cooper's time, we need not be surprised that Cooper's pugnacity evoked such sweet disinterestedness as Park Benjamin indulged in when he called Cooper "a superlative ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... was put upon trial for the offence of maintaining this ill reputed establishment. Her demeanor was singularly exceptional; for she did not scruple to interrupt the proceedings with the most fluent billingsgate, and upon receiving sentence berated the presiding judge in language betokening an extraordinary depth of desperate hardihood. Inquiry revealed the fact, that her solitary house, standing upon an elevated plain of some extent, the ground ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... phraseology of the Racing Calendar, appear to be "got by Highlows out of Bluchers." They thrive chiefly in the neighbourhoods of Houndsditch, Whitechapel, and Billingsgate. They attach themselves principally to butchers' boys, Israelitish disposers of vix and pinthils, and itinerant misnomers of "live fish." On their first introduction to their masters, by prigging or purchase, they represent some of the glories of "Day and Martin;" but, strange to say, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... of improving their social status. The Telis are generally considered to be quarrelsome and talkative, and the Bahnas or Dhunias have the same characteristics. If one man abusing another lapses into Billingsgate, the other will say to him, 'Hamko Julaha Dhunia neh jano,' or 'Don't talk to me as if I was a Julaha ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Du unverschamter Hund du!" in good Billingsgate German, and wiping her eyes with her apron. And I dressed with trembling fingers because I dared not otherwise face the brave little Austrian, the plucky little aborigine who, with the donning of the new Amerikanische gown had acquired some real ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... misguided power, Combined in palace, temple, hall, and bower, To crush an outcast Queen, with evidence By facts refuted, ridiculed by sense?— Tales that would merit but an equal fate, Told of the veriest wench in Billingsgate! FATHERS! and BRITONS! whence this alien band Of miscreant lechers bribed from sea and land?— By England spurn'd, yet plied with England's gold, Till every scoundrel's stock of oaths was sold; Then hither sent by hirelings vile as they, To pass for sterling truth in open ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous
... 23. I have been thirteen days at Rochester, and am just now returned. I came back by water in a common boat twenty miles for a shilling, and when I landed at Billingsgate, I carried my budget myself to Cornhill before I could get a coach, and was not much incommoded' Ib. ii.294. See ante, iv.8, 22, for mention ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of the kingdom in every conceivable thing that will bear moving. Sheep have been sent from Perth to London, and Covent Garden has supplied tons of the finer description of vegetables to the citizens of Glasgow; every Saturday five tons of the best fish in season are despatched from Billingsgate to Birmingham, and milk is conveyed in padlocked tins, from and beyond Harrow, at the rate of about one penny per gallon. In articles which are imported into both Liverpool and London, there is a constant interchange, ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... vote against them, and to vote for American-born citizens and Protestants: which is as much our right, as it is the right of these foreign Catholics to vote against and proscribe American Protestants. For this, you and your villainous associates exhaust the whole vocabulary of Billingsgate upon the American party. What is their offence? Why, they simply place certain questions before persons desiring to act with them, which they think, at least, may affect the national welfare, and before the people of the Union, and ask their opinion of these questions at the ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... be plentifully supplied from almost every family in the kingdom. And indeed, to make this hospital of any real benefit, we cannot admit fewer, even at first, than thirty thousand, including the ladies of Billingsgate and Leadenhall ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... so much amazed and concerned at this melancholy tale, that bursting out into tears, and hanging about his brother's neck, he begged him to take a coach and begone to Billingsgate, giving him ten guineas in hand and telling him that his bills should not be protested if he drew within the compass of a hundred pounds from Dieppe, whither he said the ship was bound. West was no sooner out of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... haste to get out of hearing from this Billingsgate oratory; and, indeed, to make an end with these authors, except I could call rogue and rascal as fast as they. Let us examine the little reason they ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... unlawfully and wickedly to encourage his Majesty's subjects in the said Province of Massachusetts to resist and oppose his Majesty's Government." He said the advertisement was "a false, wicked, malicious, scandalous, and seditious libel;" "full of ribaldry, Billingsgate, scurrility, balderdash, and impudence;" "wicked is a term too high for this advertisement;" "its impudence disarmed its wickedness." In short, Mr. Horne was accused of "resisting an officer," obstructing ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... have their humorous side. It was Daniel O'Connell, I believe, who defeated the female champion of Billingsgate by calmly referring to her as the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle, which was something utterly beyond her powers of repartee: it was he, at all events, who silenced another virago with the cutting response, "Sure every one knows, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... destroy spawn or which serve as food for fish, etc.—on turning to the left, we find ourselves in the fish market, which will probably vie with the aquaria on the other side in attracting popular attention. This model Billingsgate is to be divided into two parts, the one for the sale of fresh, the other of dried ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... Canada, may call one another rogues and miscreants, in the most approved Billingsgate, through the medium of the newspapers, which are a sort of safety-valve to let off all the bad feelings and malignant passions floating through the country, without any dread of the horsewhip. Hence it is the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... mouthings of demagogues and the billingsgate of sectionalists lay this elemental fact—a ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... I were at the door, and by 10.32 the tunnel-like walls of the "spite house" resounded with as illuminating a verbal interchange of billingsgate biographies as I have ever listened to. At 10.35 I covered Addicks in a hasty but quite successful retreat which he beat to our cab. Thence to the Hoffman House, where I summoned Parker Chandler to aid in the calming of our raving associate. The next two hours were of the pulse-jumping, vein-tearing ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... into the fo'c's'les of Grand Banks fishing vessels; to keep an eye on the activities of our Bureau of Fisheries; to hymn a praise to the monumental new Fish Pier at Boston; to glance at conditions at the premier fish market of the world, Billingsgate; to herald the fish display at the Canadian National Exhibition at Toronto, and, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... clothes (there was at least no shining armour swank at Potsdam in those days), his practice of solemnly cutting capers for the benefit of his "reader," though I know not explicitly what a caper is, his Billingsgate language, his real opinion of VOLTAIRE, his charming, if possibly rare, acts of magnanimity, his moderation in war, which was not all hypocrisy. In fact, if you expect an ogre you will be disappointed. He could give the latest Hohenzollern points in a good many directions. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... the satire was—how fierce the assault—what garbage hurled at opponents—what foul blows were hit—what language of Billingsgate flung! Fancy a party in a country-house now looking over Woodward's facetiae or some of the Gilray comicalities, or the slatternly Saturnalia of Rowlandson! Whilst we live we must laugh, and have folks to make us laugh. We cannot afford to lose Satyr with his pipe ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the lines by stout whipcord; for the denizens of those western waters were not the poddlies, coddlings, and shrimps that one is apt to associate with summer resorts by the sea. They were those veritable inhabitants of the deep that figure on the slabs of Billingsgate and similar markets—plaice and skate of the largest dimensions, congers that might suggest the great sea serpent, and ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... deigned to smile.' Then she will break out into expressions of savage hate; but for my poor mother it was ALWAYS hatred. It was, 'The she-dragon is sick to-day; I wish to Heaven she would die!' or, 'The hideous old Irish basketwoman has been treating me to some of her Billingsgate to-day,' and so forth: all which expressions, read to Mrs. Barry, or translated from the French and Italian, in which many of them were written, did not fail to keep the old lady in a perpetual fury against her charge: and so I had my watch-dog, as I called her, always ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rump, for I plainly see 'tis As salt as your parents, Oceanus and Tethys. But had I first known you had sprung from salt water, The Devil for me, should have marry'd the daughter; Besides, you are grown both so lustful and bold, And for all your sweet looks, have a Billingsgate tongue, That is fifty times worse than a fishwoman's hung. If these be the plagues of a beautiful wife, O ease me, Great Jove, of so cursed a life; If La Pies divine, who inhabit the Heavens, Will Whore on like ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt had been in the first. The manner of his criticism is not at all judicial. His prose is as lyrical as his verse, and his praise and blame both in excess—dithyrambic laudation or affluent billingsgate. In particular, he works the adjective "divine" so hard that it loses meaning. Yet stripped of its excited superlatives, and reduced to the cool temperature of ordinary speech, his critical work is found to be full of insight, and his judgment in matters of poetical technique almost always ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Mary on the Woollen Hithe and St. Mary of the Woolchurch Haw. This corner, then near the modern Mansion House, was the north-western corner of the little fort, Dowgate was at the south-western, and Billingsgate at the south-eastern corner, while Mincing Lane, perhaps at Fenchurch Street, completed the rectangle. What formed the defence on this, the eastern side, we have no evidence, but it was probably one of the "shares, rilles, or streames" ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various
... languages, and have not lost them yet, though I write no bill over my door, or set Latin quotations in the front of the 'Review.' But, to my irreparable loss, I was bred but by halves; for my father, forgetting Juno's royal academy, left the language of Billingsgate quite out of my education: hence I am perfectly illiterate in the polite style of the street, and am not fit to converse with the porters and carmen of quality, who grace their diction with the beauties of calling names, and curse ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... untainted by Gallic connections, are suspect. At Billingsgate a soldier swears that he was set upon at night because he wore the uniform of "a d——d tyrant"; and other evidence proves that the service was unpopular for political reasons as well as the poor pay. Farmers are plied ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... we may as well look in for a few moments at the New Coal Exchange opposite Billingsgate Market; a sightly, circular building, of rich interior decoration, that will well repay a visit. It is one of our newest 'lions,' and is certainly a very significant sign and monument of the enormous and swiftly-increasing commercial activity of the country. On the tesselated ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... common enough among the Grecian housekeepers at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries. I have omitted not a few of the bad words, and forborne the repetition of that voluminous eloquence poured out, after the Billingsgate fashion, equally upon myself, her daughter, and husband. During the vituperation she still kicked and scuffled; my face suffered, and my eyes narrowly escaped. But I grasped her firmly; and when her husband, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... By the treatment I got from the men in charge, one would take them to be a gang of copperheads. Seeing that they were going to refuse me admission to the car, I began to call them off in no gentle manner. My billingsgate caused a crowd to gather. I informed the trainmen and the people assembled that if I could have a squad of my regiment there for a very few minutes, I would go in that car, or that train would be a wreck. I soon had the sympathy of the lookers on, and ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... press groaned in bringing forth a hateful brood of pamphlets, malicious scribbles, and billingsgate ribaldry. No generous and impartial person then can blame the present undertaking, which is designed purely for the diversion and merriment of the reader. Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... spoke of Cooper personally with great respect. But such was not the treatment he generally received. The language with which he was assailed was of the most insulting and grossly abusive kind. In those days it was called appalling severity. It reads now like very dreary and very vulgar billingsgate. One example will suffice. The "New York Mirror" was then supposed to be the leading literary paper in New York. It was nominally edited by Morris, Willis, and Fay, though the two last were at that time in Europe. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... reflection to compare the present state of the fishery with its prosperity in 1579, or in more modern periods. Within the recollection of the editor, there were 60 boats employed in catching mackerel, and in a propitious season, that species of fish has produced in Billingsgate market a sum of L10,000, with which the town was enriched. In the autumn, 20 of these boats were fitted out for the herring voyage, and one boat has been known to land during the season from 20 to 30 lasts of herrings, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... perversion, profanation, desecration; injury, maltreatment, mistreatment, outrage, offense; invective, contumely, reproach, scurrility, opprobrium, tirade, billingsgate, vilification; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... colloquialism, informal speech, informal language. substandard language, vernacular. vulgar language, obscene language, obscenity, vulgarity. jargon, technical terms, technicality, lingo, slang, cant, argot; St. Gile's Greek, thieves' Latin, peddler's French, flash tongue, Billingsgate, Wall Street slang. pseudology[obs3]. pseudonym &c. (misnomer) 565; Mr. So-and-so; wha d'ye call 'em[obs3], whatchacallim, what's his name; thingummy[obs3], thingumbob; je ne sais quoi[Fr]. neologist[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... for landing-places, as Dowgate and Billingsgate; also in cliffs, as Kingsgate, Margate, and Ramsgate; those in Greece and in Italy are called scala. Also, a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... with that of a poet—which marked all his satirical pieces;—Crabbe, with his caustic vein and sternly-literal descriptions, behind which are seen, half-skulking from view, kindness, pity, and love;—Byron, with the clever Billingsgate of his earlier, and the more than Swiftian ferocity of his later satires;—and Moore, with the smartness, sparkle, tiny splendour, and minikin speed of his witty shafts. In comparison with even these masters ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... when she should have a taste of his cat-o'-nine-tails athwart her quarters; but, instead of being intimidated by his menaces, she set him at defiance, and held forth with such a flow of eloquence, as would have entitled her to a considerable share of reputation, even among the nymphs of Billingsgate; for this young lady, over and above a natural genius for altercation, had her talents cultivated among the venerable society of weeders, podders, and hoppers, with whom she had associated from her tender years. No wonder, then, that she soon obtained a complete victory ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... published by Fores on the 11th of July, entitled, Russian Condescension, or the Blessings of Peace, in which a coarse woman is represented as kissing the emperor, who is habited in English military uniform. "There, Sal," says she to her companion, "I can boast of what none of the ——s at Billingsgate can, having kissed the king's emperor of all the Russian bears, and he is the sweetest, modestest, mildest gentleman I ever kissed in all my life." On the other side a huge country gawky shakes hands with the duchess, whose ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... are Bussy's invectives against courtly practices (I, i, 84-104) and hypocrisy in high places (III, ii, 25-59), while the "flyting" between him and Monsieur is perhaps the choicest specimen of Elizabethan "Billingsgate" that has come down to us. It was a versatile pen that could turn from passages like these to the epic narrative of the duel, or Tamyra's lyric invocation of the "peaceful regents of the night" (II, ii, 158), ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... evidently done his task with a thoroughness that Mugridge had not forgiven, for words followed and evil names involving smirched ancestries. Mugridge menaced with the knife he was sharpening for me. Leach laughed and hurled more of his Telegraph Hill Billingsgate, and before either he or I knew what had happened, his right arm had been ripped open from elbow to wrist by a quick slash of the knife. The cook backed away, a fiendish expression on his face, the knife held before him in a position of defence. But Leach took it quite calmly, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... why, Such base objections she did make, She answered thus scornfully, In words not fit for Billingsgate: 'She might have taken fairer on - Or else be hanged:' ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... the third Earl of Shaftesbury, in his 'Miscellaneous Reflections,' 1714, refers to notable philosophers and divines 'who can be contented to make sport, and write in learned Billingsgate, to divert the Coffeehouse, and entertain the assemblys at Booksellers' shops, or the more airy Stalls ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... bedroom, beheld, to his great astonishment, the well-known figure of Jeanie Deans herself retreating from his gate; while his housekeeper, with arms a-kimbo, fist clenched and extended, body erect, and head shaking with rage, sent after her a volley of Billingsgate oaths. His choler rose in proportion to the surprise, and, perhaps, to the disturbance of his repose. "Hark ye," he exclaimed from the window, "ye auld limb of Satan—wha the deil gies you commission to guide an ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... have done it already. - But he must have a small share of fortitude indeed, who is put out of countenance by hard speeches without sense and meaning, or affrighted from the path of duty by the rude language of Billingsgate - For my own part, I smile contemptuously at such unmanly efforts: I would be glad to hear the reasoning of Chronus, if he has a capacity for it; but I disregard his railing as I would the barking of ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... Being universal, it took away all ground for feeling the words of an antagonist as any personal insult; so he had rarely a motive for a duel. 2dly, the anger was thus less acute; yet, if it were acute, then this Billingsgate resource furnished an instantaneous vehicle for expectorating the wrath. Look, for example, at Cicero's orations against Mark Antony, or Catiline, or against Piso. This last person was a senator of the very highest ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the audience, frivolous, volatile, taking its character from the loose, weak king, was unusually complaisant through the presence of the first gentleman of Europe. As the last of the Georges declared himself in good-humor, so every toady grinned and every courtly flunkey swore in the Billingsgate of that profanely eloquent period that the actress was ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... this I went, I cannot clearly call to mind; of distance, as well as of time, I had lost all calculation. I recollect making a circuit to avoid the press of boats waiting for the early dawn by Billingsgate Market, and have a vision of the White Tower against the heavens. But my next impression of any clearness is that of rowing under the shadow of a black three-masted schooner that lay close under shore, tilted over on her port side in the low water. As my dingey floated out again from beneath ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... into commotion, and some of its prime ministers were deputed to harangue Pacchierotti upon the rides he had committed. Billingsgate never produced such furious orators. Had the safety of their mighty state depended upon this imprudent excursion, they could not have vociferated with greater violence. You know I am rather energetic, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... without the aid of a phonetic alphabet. He is dressed in somebody else's very second best as a coast-guardsman, and gives himself the airs of a stage tar with sufficient success to pass as a possible fish porter of bad character in casual employment during busy times at Billingsgate. His manner shows an earnest disposition to ingratiate himself with the missionary, probably for some ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... bridesmaid walked on ahead talking lovingly. "I said them words, which you oughter 'ave said, 'cause you ain't got no memory t' speak of. But they ain't my beliefs, but yours, or I'll know the reason why. Jes' you say them now. Swear, without Billingsgate, as you'll allays love, honor an' ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... Paphlagonian' from Demos' favour by outvying him in his own arts of impudent flattery, noisy boasting and unscrupulous allurement. After a fierce and stubbornly contested trial of wits and interchange of 'Billingsgate,' 'the Sausage-seller' beats his rival at his own weapons and gains his object; he supplants the disgraced favourite, who is driven out ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of feathered folks. So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay is wholly addicted to billingsgate. He paid no attention to the distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... mallet in 1581; Singleton was pardoned. His Mark, of which there are variations, is sufficiently self-explanatory, although it may be mentioned that for a time he dwelt at the Golden Tun in Creed Lane. Walter Lynne, 1547-50, who was a scholar and an author, had a shop at "Sommer's Key near Billingsgate" and printed about twenty sermons and other religious tracts in octavo, employed the device given as an initial to the present chapter. John Wyghte, or Wight, resembled Singleton somewhat in his facility for running ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... who pretends that nothing but folly makes men deny these systems; perhaps, however, if he had suppressed his negation, he would have more closely aproximated the truth. Doctor Bentley, in his Folly of Atheism, has let loose the whole Billingsgate of theological spleen, which he has scattered about with all the venom of the most filthy reptiles: if he and other expounders are to be believed, "nothing is blacker than the heart of an atheist; nothing is more false than his mind. Atheism," according to them, "can only be the offspring ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... his pocket and took the coats in his hand, and went out saying he must be at Billingsgate to go down to Gravesend by ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects. Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those of Christian sectarians in their fiercest controversies. "A thousand years in the lowest of the hells is the atonement prescribed by the Nichirenites for the priests ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the bulwarks, and joined by a dozen others, yelled defiance at the authorities. As the Noa-Noa gradually drew out these cries became more definite, and the honor of France and of all Frenchmen was assailed in the most ancient English Billingsgate. Gestures of frightful significance added to the insults, and these not producing retorts in kind from the second in command and the populace, a shower of limes began to fall ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... we were looking up at the bronze horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant, do you wish to go up there? I give it as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make life a burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk forever and forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use. Inspiration itself could hardly comprehend them. If they would only show you a masterpiece of art, or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house, or a battle-field, hallowed by touching memories or historical reminiscences, or grand traditions, and then step aside and hold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is in open war with me in such a manner as makes her very ridiculous without doing me much harm; my moderation having a very bright pretence of shewing itself" (she wrote to Lady Mar). "Firstly, she was pleased to attack me in very Billingsgate at a masquerade, where she was as visible as ever she was in her own clothes. I had the temper not only to keep silence myself, but enjoined it to the person with me; who would have been very glad to have shewn his great skill in sousing upon that occasion. She endeavoured ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... surroundings of such small despots. Deriving the only education it ever gets directly from its personal attendants, this young monster of bad temper, bad manners, and bad language becomes precociously proficient in overbearing ways, and voluble in Hindostanee Billingsgate, before it has acquired enough of its ancestral tongue to frame the simplest sentence. It bullies its bhearer; it bangs distractingly on the tom-tom; it surfeits itself to an apoplectic point with pish-pash; it burns its mouth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... the new Coal Exchange, opposite Billingsgate, was to have been opened by the Queen in person. A slight illness—an attack of chicken-pox—compelled her Majesty to give up her intention, and forego the motherly pleasure of seeing her two elder children, the Prince ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... meaning in your conclusive paragraph on that subject: Dictionary-writer I suppose alludes to Johnson; but surely you do not equal the compiler of a dictionary to a genuine poet? Is a brickmaker on a level with Mr. Essex? Nor can I hold that exquisite wit and satire are Billingsgate; if they were, Milles and Johnson would be able to write an answer to the "Epistle." I do as little guess whom you mean that got a pension by Toryism: if Johnson too, he got a pension for having abused pensioners, and yet took one himself, which was contemptible ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... the year, when ill castes meet, when all distinction of castes and ranks is forgotten—the abomination of mixing them all together permitted, for their sins no doubt—high caste and low, from the abandoned Paria to the Brahmin prince, from their Billingsgate and Farringilon Without, suppose, up to their St. James's, Street and Grosvenor Square, mingle, mingle, ye who mingle may, white spirits and grey, black spirits and blue. Now, pray look around: is not this Jaggernaut night ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... happealed to the gentleman,"—meaning me,—"didn't 'e find it a norrid 'ole, habsolutely hawful?" And then she went clattering among tinware and crockery, and snubbed the gentlemanly boy in a sort of tender Billingsgate. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... not of mine), and that it would not be the handsome thing to dedicate to one friend any thing containing such matters about another. However, I'll work the Laureate before I have done with him, as soon as I can muster Billingsgate therefor. I like a row, and always did from a boy, in the course of which propensity, I must needs say, that I have found it the most easy of all to be gratified, personally and poetically. You disclaim 'jealousies;' but I would ask, as Boswell did of Johnson, 'of whom could you be jealous?'—of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... of abuse by declaring that Scott has encouraged the lowest panders of a venal press, 'deluging and nauseating the public mind with the offal and garbage of Billingsgate abuse and vulgar slang;' and presently he calls Scott—by way, it is true, of lowering Byron—'one of the greatest teachers of morality that ever lived.' He invents a theory, to which he returns more than once, to justify the contrast. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Kriloff or Tourgueneff, can believe; but the comic journals themselves have fallen far too much into the hands of the Imperial University, whose literary style is a combination of the humor of the cider-cellars with the verbal fluency of Billingsgate. Under such auspices the ill-starred periodicals naturally oscillate between insipid propriety and labored coarseness. For a month or two the talented contributors go smoothly on in their career of untranslatable pleasantry, till some special atrocity calls forth the fatherly admonition of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... she had suffered dreadfully after eating some fish at dinner which she was sure Pennideath, the fishmonger—she always felt that man was an anarchist in disguise—had bought out of the condemned stock at Billingsgate, and none of the doctor's medicines were of the slightest good to her, and she was heartbroken at having to part so suddenly from Leonard, and would I spare half an hour to comfort an old woman who had sent her only son to die for his country and was ready, when it pleased God, if not sooner, to ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... lived over in Billingsgate Ward—the worst part of London—a Jewish soothsayer named Grouche. He was also an astrologer, and had of late grown into great fame as ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... street and alley in Palermo till he is got rid of; not that the stationary market is quiet; for the noise made in selling the mutest of all animals is in all countries really remarkable; but who shall do justice to a Sicilian Billingsgate at mezzogiorno! "Trenta sei, trenta sei," bawls out the Padrone, cleaving a fish in twain with one stroke of an immense chopper kept for the purpose. "Trenta sei, trenta sei," repeat the two journeymen accomplices, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... not been an honester and more decent livelihood for Mr. Norton (Daniel De Foe's son of love by a lady who vended oysters) to have dealt in a fish-market, than to be dealing out the dialects of Billingsgate in ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... and he had his reward when young Joe jaunted across London for fish at Billingsgate or greens at Covent Garden and ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... be forgot, though it was much of a piece with that you so humorously relate: he swore to me he never saw a rag fit for a gentleman to wear, but in Rag-fair; he said there was no scolding but at Billingsgate; and he avowed there were no bad poets but in Grub-street; I could not stand that, I bid him call to remembrance an acquaintance of his who lived in the Parliament-Close, and also a relation of his ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... it—which so provoked the other lady that they fell to blows, till the waiting-women, having in vain attempted to part them, the footmen were fain to be called in. After they were parted, they ended the battle with their other missive weapon, the tongue—and there was all the eloquence of Billingsgate on both sides more than enough. At last, by the advice of friends it was, as is before noted, brought ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... London, such as we are apt to picture it to ourselves, seems to have derived those leading features which it so long retained, from the days when Chaucer, with downcast but very observant eyes, passed along its streets between Billingsgate and Aldgate. Still, here as elsewhere in England the remembrance of the most awful physical visitations which have ever befallen the country must have long lingered; and, after all has been said, it is wonderful that the traces of them should ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... frontage to Mercer's Hall. The "gothic" tower at Peveril Point at one time graced the southern approach to London Bridge as a Wellington memorial. The clock at the Town Hall is said to be from a "scrapped" city church and the gilt vane on the turret of Purbeck House on the other side of the way is from Billingsgate. Not the least surprising of these relics are the lamp-and-corner-posts bearing the names ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... bands of natives arrive from distant hunting-grounds, laden with rich furs, which are speedily transferred to the Hudson's Bay Company's stores in exchange for the goods aforementioned. And many a tough wrangle has the trader on such occasions with sharp natives, who might have graduated in Billingsgate, so close are they at a bargain. Here, too, voyageurs are supplied with an equivalent for their wages, part in advance, if they desire it (and they generally do desire it), and part at the conclusion of ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... understand this important secret, much less French privateers. I can only liken the clamour that was now going on in the Dawn's lee-gangway, to that which is raised by Dutch fish-women, on the arrival of the boats from sea with their cargoes. To talk of Billingsgate in comparison with these women, is to do the Holland and Flemish ladies gross injustice, English phlegm being far more silent than Dutch phlegm. No sooner was my proposition made than it was accepted by acclamation, and the privateersmen ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... choose to descend to Billingsgate," said Sir Francis. "I have my own ideas as to ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... who, in another place, even in the most polished courts, would take a high rank for good breeding and gentlemanly education, at these tables make use of language which, I hope, Billingsgate itself would turn from with disgust. It cannot be repeated; neither would it be believed, unless by such as, like myself, have had "confirmation strong," too strong to be rejected, if I did not, at the same time, reject the evidence of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... following day, when morning broke, in all parts of London gallows were found erected, from Billingsgate in the east to Hyde Park Corner in the west, and in nineteen different places were these instruments of death set up; and ere the close of that black day, forty-eight men had been suspended on them, all accused of joining in the rebellion of Sir Thomas ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... but there was hardly anybody there, and nothing occurred in the House of Commons but some interchange of Billingsgate between O'Connell and George Dawson. The Duke talks with confidence, and has no idea of resigning, but he does not inspire his friends with the confidence he feels or affects himself, though they talk ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... you are quite through with your billingsgate,' she finally said, 'you will take yourself off my steps before you are ejected. You! to presume to criticise me! You, that are so low in the scale of being, you can no more understand my feelings and motives than a jellyfish ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... wanting, and I know not what can be proposed better. I answer you right painted cloth, may mean, I give you a true painted cloth answer; as we say, she talks right Billingsgate; that is, exactly such language as is used at Billingsgate. (1773) ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... of cant in which my drolling author is so luxuriant; for though such words have stood me in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much gibberish and Billingsgate trash in my memory; nor could I forbear asking of myself, as an Italian cardinal said on another account, D'onde hai tu pigliato tante coglionerie? Where the devil didst thou rake ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... forth. No imagery was too nasty, no epithet too strong, no charge too base to bring against an opponent. The heroic examples of Greek and Roman invective paled before the inexhaustible resources of learned billingsgate stored in the minds of the humanists and theologians. To accuse an enemy of atheism and heresy was a matter of course; to add charges of unnatural vice or, if he were dead, stories of suicide and of the devils hovering greedily over his deathbed, was extremely common. Even crowned heads exchanged ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... out, but flickering, fluttering gaslights appeared, and around each post was a great, gray, fluffy aureole of mist. Just at the entrance to the bridge we saw Nancy dogged by Noah Claypole. They turned down towards Billingsgate Fish-Market, and as the fog swallowed them, Hawkins answered my question as to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... patiently waited for their burdens; below, was a throng of washerwomen, beating their clothes upon the stones, just moistened by the scant water which flowed over them, and interchanging Spanish Billingsgate with each other and a gang of ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... I go further, I must tell you that my uncle's house was one of the old houses in Billingsgate. It stood in a narrow, crowded lane, at the western end of Thames Street, close to the river. Few of the houses thereabouts were old; for the fire of London had nearly destroyed that part of the city, but ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... Billingsgate, according to Sir E.E. COOPER, is much better than it used to be. Fish porters invariably say "Excuse me" before throwing a length of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... tipsy retinue in the country town. Had she a mind to be revenged, Lady Castlewood could have found the way to her rival's house easily enough; and, if she had come with bowl and dagger, would have been routed off the ground by the enemy with a volley of Billingsgate, which the fair person ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... celebrated peregrination with his four friends, and played hop-scotch in the courtyard of the Guildhall. Dr. Johnson came here in 1783, and "returned to London by water in a common boat, landing at Billingsgate." ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... company came too, leaving traces of themselves in such names as Blackfriars Brook, Billingsgate, and Houndsditch—names which ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... terms, which Demosthenic force outgo, And baldest jests of foul-mouth'd Cicero. Right in the midst great Ate keeps her stand, And from her sovereign station taints the land. Hence Pulpits rail; grave Senates learn to jar; Quacks scold; and Billingsgate ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... coup, he would allow it to remain; but when the croupier stated that the table was not responsible for more than ten thousand francs, then Blucher would roar like a lion, and rap out oaths in his native language, which would doubtless have met with great success at Billingsgate, if duly translated: fortunately, they were not heeded, as they were ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... whose choleric commander bellowed instructions at us, interlarded with much profanity, through a megaphone. The captain of the Padova could understand a few simple English phrases, if slowly spoken, but the broadside of Billingsgate only confused and puzzled him, so, despite the fact that he had no pilot and that darkness was rapidly descending, he kept serenely on his course. This seemed to enrage the British skipper, who threw over his wheel ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... and stands in Massachusetts, I am told, are supplied and kept by natives of Wellfleet, and a part of this town is still called Billingsgate, from the oysters having been formerly planted there; but the native oysters are said to have died in 1770. Various causes are assigned for this, such as a ground frost, the carcasses of black-fish kept to rot in the harbor, and the like; but the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... ever spring of them. But let me see: I shall have much anger; for the tanners will miss him in their leather, the tailors in their cutting out of garments, the shoemaker in closing, the tapsters in filling pots, and the very oystermen to mingle their oysters at Billingsgate: yet it is no matter; the world is well-rid of such ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Sheep, beautiful sheep with tinkling bells hung round their necks, were chewing the cud in peace and happiness. But notwithstanding it was the hour of repose, the tongues of the female travellers were making a clatter which all the women of Billingsgate could not rival, and together with the squalling of brats innumerable, completely spoiled the emotions, which the wild and pleasing scene around them would otherwise have awakened in their breasts. The sheep here are regarded with as much partiality, and treated much in the same manner as ladies ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement, that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day: but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast with some young Ladies. Johnson scolded him for 'leaving his social ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... were long litanies of billingsgate, cursing, and threatening. One of these "scourging" exorcisms ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... dear Poole! or I will crimp all the rampant Billingsgate of Burke to abuse you. Count Rumford is ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... obsessed by the immensity, the atmosphere and the mystery of London. Its nomenclature embedded itself in my fancy; Hounsditch and Shoreditch, Billingsgate and Blackfriars; Bishopgate, within, and Bishopgate, without; Threadneedle Street and Wapping-Old-Stairs; the Inns of Court where Jarndyce struggled with Jarndyce, and the taverns where the Mark Tapleys, the Captain Costigans ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... he visited his conversation was serious, grave, and sententious; and, as we have seen, he could quote Scripture with the readiness of a theologian. In the shop, when he had to deal with the lower classes, he showed himself acquainted with their modes of expression, and spoke the Billingsgate of the market-women, which he had acquired in the rue Comtesse d'Artois, treating them familiarly, and they generally addressed him as "gossip Denies." By his own account he easily judged the characters of the various people with whom ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a mile west is Stane Street, striking London-wards from Billingshurst, and we may follow it for a while on our way to Rudgwick, near the county's border. We leave the Roman road (which once ran as straight as might be as far as Billingsgate, but is now diverted and lost in many spots) at the drive to Dedisham, on the left, and thus save a considerable corner. Dedisham, in its hollow, is an ancient agricultural settlement: a farm and feudatory ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... fought for Gluck; but the witty Marmontel was the advocate of his rival. The keen-witted Du Rollet was Gluckist; but La Harpe, the eloquent, was Piccinist. So this battle-royal in art commenced and raged with virulence. The green-room was made unmusical with contentions carried out in polite Billingsgate. Gluck tore up his unfinished score in rage when he learned that his rival was to compose an opera on the same libretto. La Harpe said: "The famous Gluck may puff his own compositions, but he can't prevent them from boring us to death." Thus the wags of Paris laughed and ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... into no joint debates; she did not answer back. This intense conviction which admits of no parley was one of the secrets of her power. For many years the Billingsgate Calendar was directed at her upon every ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... very kind to the ladies in his religion, unless it be the compliment which he has paid them, by placing all the imaginable felicity of Paradise in their embraces. I took no notice of the virago. I find it's no use. I was glad, however, to hear she was not Touarick, and only a Billingsgate Mooress of the place. I am also happy to tell my fair readers, she was not fair but very ugly. A large party of people followed me home, hooting me, to give them something to eat. This rabble fancies they have the right to insult a Christian, unless he gives them something to eat or to wear. To ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... pleasant, gentle, serious, compassionate, artlessly eloquent, and, withal, perfectly pure in all he says. When Luther becomes "coarse," there is a reason. One must have read much in Luther, one should have read all of Luther, and his "billingsgate" will assume a different meaning. If there is madness in his reckless speech, there is method in it. One must try and understand ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau |
